Role of organization ethics in critical care medicine

The authors view the activities involved in critical care medicine as composing a complex adaptive system that is itself operating within a complex adaptive system, the healthcare organization. The authors explain why it is necessary that these systems be viewed this way, and they explain what is necessary to allow them to produce creative or emergent outcomes. They provide a justification for the role of an organization ethics program within this context. They provide a definition of organization ethics and outline the characteristics that an effective organization ethics program would possess.